CMR's Community Garden

Community Ministries of Rockville (CMR) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organized in 1967 by a coalition of congregations that partners with local government, private foundations, corporations, and individuals. In 2013, CMR purchased a single family house with the intention of providing permanent supportive living quarters for women to move from homelessness to independence. The house can accomodate five single women at a time, who will receive supervision and social services such as job training. The house is near bus and subway lines, and is within walking distance of retail, services, and jobs.

The house sits on a large sunny lot (7200 sq ft) that would be ideal for a garden for our residents. Our primary goal is for the residents to be able to supplement their diet with home-grown, healthy food. The food would be on-site, an important part of providing our residents with access to high quality, nutritionally sound food options that can break the cycle of relying on fast food or no-cook supermarket food. In addition, it would empower our residents to support themselves by their own efforts, an important component of building self-esteem. Finally, it would be an ideal tool to engage our neighbors in our mission. It will be a community building effort.

We intend to establish 30x30 foot fenced garden for growing vegetables. Eventually, we hope to add small fruit such as raspberries or currants outside the fence. Since there has never been a garden on this site, in the first year we anticipate start up costs for rototilling the garden site, adding soil amendments and compost, setting simple metal fence posts and installing plastic mesh deer fencing. We would also like to establish an area for composting yard and kitchen waste on site. We hope to have the garden fully productive by summer 2014.